[LINK] RFI: Overseas Payments

[Paul Bolger]

PayPal,  if you don't mind giving your business to reactionary Americans.
Otherwise you could try giving a cc authorisation for that amount. Car hire
places seem to regard that as okay for security.
On 18/03/2014 5:40 PM, "Roger Clarke" <Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au> wrote:

> What are linkers' experiences with making payments overseas?
>
> I paid 50% of a 10-day rental in France recently.
>
> Suncorp took AUD 20 off me for starters.
> Then it arrived EUR 38 short.
>
> That mirrors the experience with a payment to an Austrian bank last year.
>
> Despite the invention of SWIFT 40 years ago, it appears that
> Australian banks aren't big enough or organised enough to be able to
> pay directly to mainstream banks overseas.
>
> Instead, unnecessary intermediaries are used.  Suncorp, and I gather
> banks generally, protect themslelves by saying 'there may be fees'.
> But you can't know in advance what they are.  I'm looking for someone
> to threaten litigation, in order to force basic consumer rights to be
> reinstated.
>
> In this case, Suncorp wrote an unapologetic letter back to me,
> pointed to their Terms, and offered to send the missing EUR 38 on to
> the French bank as a one-time-only favour.
>
> I agreed, partly to get the EUR 38 back, partly to solve the
> immediate problem of the short-payment, but mainly to establish that
> they can indeed achieve payment of a nominated amount to a distant
> account.  Precisely EUR 38 arrived.  So they're bare-faced liars for
> saying that they can't do it!
>
>
> In the meantime, I need to make a further 50% payment to the French bank.
>
> Does anyone know of a way to transfer funds that costs less than AUD
> 80 per transaction??!!
>
> (With the largely-automated systems that are in place, somewhere
> closer to AUD 0.80 seems like a fair price.  Currency conversion is a
> separate transaction of course, with its own 'spread', i.e. fees,
> plus commission).
>
>
> [I'll claim this isn't Off-Topic, on the basis that, like SCADA, some
> part of the international transfer system probably now uses the
> Internet - one hopes, using a VPN ...]
>
>
> --
> Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
>
> Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
> Tel: +61 2 6288 6916                        http://about.me/roger.clarke
> mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/
>
> Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
> Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University
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